Favourite Fives: Chris Gove

Have you had your city centre Christmas shopping Michael Douglas Falling Down moment yet? Well remove your elbow from that rude shopper’s eye socket for a moment and forget about the festive nightmare surrounding you and enjoy another favourite five on us. Today’s list of likes comes from Chris Gove, the ace face behind cool London brand/shop Percival and first up is a jacket that Father Christmas would be proud to wear (though I’m pretty sure that the tree in the picture he sent us lives in Stockport rather than the North Pole)….

Clothing

50’s Vintage Half-zip Norwegian Scouts Jacket. I recently visited Iceland; my girlfriend is from the small island of Vestmannaeyjar. The airline company managed to lose my bag thus having no clothes for the week. We routed around an old cupboard at my girlfriends mums house only to pull out this gem. She had bought it at an Icelandic charity shop a decade ago; I don’t think I took it off for the entire week going on treks, climbing mountains and on boat rides the – Norwegian Scout Jacket saved my life.

Music

Appleseed Cast – Low Level Owl Volume 1. In 2004 I took an exchange year to study in Hong Kong at the Polyu in Kowloon Bay. 4 years previously the UK had handed back HK, and it was classed as a Special Economic Region by China (meaning it’s Communist but doesn’t have to act like it) The students always talked about a loss of identity and needed to define who they were, this energy was put into creative output, the work coming from these students was unbelievable far more interesting than the work I was used to seeing for piers back home. A student called Wai always played Appleseed cast in the shared studio and it was the only music no one argued about. I love this album especially.

Book

Turning Pages – Gestalten. A couple years ago I art directed and designed an issue of GQ Style – I have done loads of editorial design in my time but this was far the biggest job. I was so nervous on my first day I thought I wouldn’t be able to come up with ideas, so bought this book and took it along in case of design-brainfreeze. As soon as i sat down at my Condenast desk I was fine and never even open the book. It sits on my shelf collecting dust as a kind of design comfort blanket.

Film

Akira in my opinion is one of the best graphic novels and animated films ever made. Brought to screens over 25 years ago made painstakingly by hand its visual style is unmistakeable and undeniably brilliant. It has a dark visceral aesthetic that blew my mind when I was 14 (and ruined my sleep for about a week). Its representation of neo-Tokyo as a broken society filled with tribes of disenfranchised people at war with themselves and their government are still really relevant. You can see traces of its aesthetic in almost every scifi / comic book adaptation in cinemas today. Also the soundtrack is mind-blowing.

Something else

MY SHOP! Blood sweat and tears were all shed to get the Percival Soho store open. After going through the pain of wholesale game for 3 years, shipments being stolen, independents dodging payments almost put us under. We finally decided to stop wholesaling and open a shop instead. It was the best thing we could have done at Percival – now a year in, we can do multiple in season drops, make what we like, meet the customers get feedback and create a physical context for the brand. We are finally enjoying designing clothes and making money!